


0. The Fool

by Gadzooks



Series: The Major Arcana [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gadzooks/pseuds/Gadzooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A wild card among wild cards.  Often unnumbered but with so much potential.  Perhaps the strongest of them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	0. The Fool

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [al-dhābiḥ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/155958) by [dellaluce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dellaluce/pseuds/dellaluce). 



> He does feel sad sometimes, but he'd rather laugh, instead.
> 
>  
> 
> (If you look really close you can see this might look very familiar. I'm sorry. Dellaluce is one of my Homestuck fanfic heroes but the concept I've been mulling over for a while. Thanks to my friends who proofread this. You guys are my bros~
> 
> Also I'm sorry I don't know how to format. It looks so WEIRD.)

Silence has become the enemy.  It coils around him like thick fog and squeezes his chest.  He's tired of the nights and the days alone, the ever present company that he keeps, too afraid to speak.  He litters the floors of his hive with noise makers and bike horns, because stepping on them makes his feet hurt, makes him swear.  Because the honks lurch him out of his stupor, even if the sharp squeals scare him.  But the silence ambushes the honks and the swears and the scrapes, grabs them by the throat and swallows them whole.

 

Silence is his enemy but he can't cope with it anymore.  So he hides in the bottom of a pie tin, slick with neon green.  He does it because he doesn't know any better.  He does it because he _can_.

 

No one ever told him that this was poison.  But how could this be so wrong?  The colors are beautiful.  They hum and they dance and he watches.  They keep him company, unlike his guardian, who's gone, always gone, appearing like a rare dream and vanishing like mist on the sea.  Lime is the color he uses to cope.  So here he is staring at the walls and watching the angry Alternian sun throw colors like spears and his floor bleeds yellows and oranges, deep reds and the gentle pinks.  He wonders what they would feel like on his grey skin.  He wonders what they would sound like.

 

He's happy.  He tells himself he's happy because he doesn't know any better.  It's sweeps after that first taste and now, there's a hollow space in his think pan and he just feels numb, numb, _numb_.  

 

He finds himself walking barefoot on the beach, his feet pick a direction (north, he thinks), and his hands decide to twirl his clubs between his fingers.   This is a fun activity, he thinks.  A game.  He doesn't count the white-and-red or white-and-green arcs they make, or how many times he can hear them whoosh and ruffle his tangled hair.  He doesn't keep time very well but it's fun to walk on the dark brown earth (his foundation, his pillar, the most stable thing he knows) and see his fingers move on autopilot out of the corners of his eyes.  His limbs don't obey him like they used to.  He feels the bones and muscles in his hands grind together and the sea breeze, the slick but worn laquer rubbing against the skin of his fingers, the still-warm-and-rough sand against his feet.  He smells salt, the slight burn of the sun scorched earth.  He tastes the sea and it cuts down the sickly sweetness of Faygo and his lime coping mechanism that coats his mouth and his lips and his teeth.

 

He thinks this is all a miracle.  It's beautiful.  Life is beautiful.

 

The sky is a a smear of purples deepening into black and it stretches forever.  His eyes were made for the darkness and he drinks it in.  (He wonders if silence looks like the sea, unfathomingly deep and dark with dark blue outstretched tendrils, surface smooth like glass and flows like spilled Faygo.  He wonders if it moves with purpose.  He wonders if it follows him.)  Dread runs up his spine, a hazy, vague thing that resembles emotion (but he doesn't really feel _those_ anymore) and he prays to his messiahs in their alien garments that the sea doesn't rise and grab him by his bony ankles and pulls him into the cold undertow.

 

  
_A memory bubbles forth from out of nowhere- solemn white.  A blend of strong curves and scales and dangerous lines.  The smell of wet fur and fish breath.  Horizontal grey pupils boring into his own yellow eyes.  He moves forward, hand outstretched, and the seagoat-his lusus his guardian his friend, his best friend- snorts and pushes off into the water.  Panic rises like the tide and he lunges into the surf.  He's only four sweeps old, why?  Why does he do this again?  He calls.  He cajoles.  He pleads.  He threatens.  Panic and anger and fear pound against the back of his skull.  The goat makes a noise in the back of its throat and kicks at him with its front legs.  The water slaps against his chest and the hoofs graze him and he persists.  He tries to grab on to slick white fur but the goat screams, twisting in the tide and slapping him with its tail.  It hurts, it stings.  He reels, nose bloody and dripping with purple, slipping on seafoam and falling on his back.  The water washes over him and the goat's tail smothers him, pushing him down.  He swallows seawater down the wrong tube, choking.  Flailing.  Scared.  The sea rushes into his ears and nose and throat, and he swears he thinks it's roaring at him._   


_  
_

  
_The goat picks him up by the collar of his shirt like it always does, drags him through the sand and out of the water; nudging him into rolling onto his side and thumping his back with its nose.  He coughs up salt and the sea, bile and blood.  He gags and he sobs and asks why.  The goats eyes tell him of its heartbreak.  It's sorry but it was a lesson that has to be taught.  He can never follow where the old goat goes.  The sea is not for him._   


_  
_

  
_His beloved guardian vanishes soon after, fading like mist in the sea.  It leaves with the tinge of indigo on its breast where the blood saturated water lapped against it..  He watches it go, curled up in the sand and waves lapping at his feet.  He thinks the sea is laughing at him._   


_  
_

  
_It's a lesson that stays with him longer than the old goat ever will._   


 

The waves storm the coast to mock him, the spray misting his clothes and he shudders.  He starts to hum, high and out of tune, voice cracking with this troll disease called growing up.  The clubs have stopped twirling, and he brandishes them to challenge the translucent fear and the smoke like cling of loneliness. (What a funny little knight he would be, club-swords and stretched diamond limbs, spade teeth and his heart on his sleeve.  Polka dots and Capricorn, war paint smeared into a charcoal smile.  Charging forward in the dark encouraged by a shrill, fluxuating hymn as he tries to soothe himself.  How sad.  How sad.)  

 

 

 

The stars poke through the jet black sky and flicker like distant flames.  He wonders, as he whines and shrieks and sings, how they would feel if he could just reach them.  If the sky feels like the worn, comfortable fabric of his t shirt, or like tiny pricks of needles, if it's warm like the pools of sunlight that dance under his window or if it's cold like the sea.  These thoughts and the sopor slime he devoured before wandering out obscure his paranoia and the high pitched noise that scrapes against his throat and pressed lips settles into a lower hum.  His head buzzes with it.  Silence retreats and the tide sluggishly laps against the rocks.

 

This spot is perfect, a high cliff surrounded by higher cliffs, wind whistling like a song.  Waves slosh in complaint and the spray hits his face.  Chapped lips slit into a blissed out smile as he climbs the rocky terrain.  His feet and shins scrape against the jagged rocks.  His pants rips at the knees where it snags against a serrated edge.  Deep purple smears the rocks and he _laughs_. It bubbles through his nose has he holds a club in tightly clenched teeth as he scales the steep grade.  (He wonders if he has a place to put his weapons, some place he can easily store them and take them out.  He wonders if such a thing exists and he wonders if he has something like that but he can't remember and he doesn't care.)  He smiles so hard his cheeks hurt and he drools a little around the handle of his club.  He laughs again, loud and honking, the breeze picking it up and carrying it to the rocks beside him and the ocean below.  Alternia laughs with him and he laughs even harder.

 

The edge of the cliff is only feet away, he can see by the pink and green moons.  They cast odd looking shadows he regards as friends and he stands up, spitting his club back into his free hand.  The laughter has subsided but the smile lingers as he stares up at the sky.  The stars flicker back and he waves idly, hands and feet, knees and shins barked up with a million dots of purple rising to the surface of his skin and throbbing in pain.  He sways in place and an idle thought passes by, wondering if he'll fall, but he has the support of the dark brown earth and the pink horizon at his back.  Heat rises idly from the porous rocks and strokes his face.  The wind gently keeps him back but the water churns, restless and inconsolable.

 

He rests a club on his shoulder and closes his eyes, feeling wind ruffle his hair and water spit on his clothes and heat caress his cheeks and the earth, always keeping him steady.  His head tilts upward to catch the twin moon's light, lime green like his pies and pink like the dying horizon.

 

The night, he thinks, is beautiful.  Life is beautiful.

 

(Another thought stirs from somewhere he can't recall and rises, dark like the sky and sticky like his cherished soda.  He wonders if he could catch the colors and use them all like paint- lime, pink, indigo.  Red, yellow, orange and brown.  Black and blue and charcoal and ivory.  Roy G. Biv.  He would paint the best miracle of all. 

 

The sopor buzz soothes it back to sleeping and he forgets he even thought it in the first place.)

 

He stands like that a while, a hole in his think pan and a smile on his face.  He doesn't think about anything, not about silence and its predatory nature, or about falling and bashing his brains on the rocks below.  He listens to the song the coast plays and the hum that keeps him sleepwalking.  He shivers and the salt stings but he's numb, numb, numb.

 

A distant rumble, long and low, percolates from the bottom.  His eyes snap open and he freezes.  Tense.  Waiting.

 

It erupts from the glassy black sea- solemn white, long horns and legs kicking, bellowing so loud it rumbles like thunder in his chest.  The sea goat- his lusus, his guardian, his friend- chases silence away with the flash of its hooves and stomps against the cliff.  It roars a defiant challenge, horizontal pupils locking onto his own.

 

It always knows where to find him.

 

His clubs slip out of his hands but he never hears them clatter on the rocks (another miracle that his sylladex provides, catching them neatly and tucking them in his specibus.  The other cards dance and quiver with joy.  So does he.)  He sprints, feet slapping against the rocks and indigo smears in his wake but he doesn't care.  He charges off the last few feet and leaps off the edge, arms spread like skinny wings and laughter in his throat.  The goat and the sea rush to meet him.

 

(The earth- the most stable thing he knows, can do nothing to stop his free fall, and the wind can't catch him.)

 

The goat grabs the back of his shirt with its teeth like it has done before, collar pressing dangerously against his wind pipe.  His hands grope blindly and wrap around the base of one of its horns, legs wrapping around its neck and he sighs, face first in damp white fur.  He clings like a grub and the goat just rumbles against him.

 

He forgave the old goat long ago.  He'll forgive him every time it leaves, because no matter how long it takes it always comes back.  He thinks he's happy because he's never felt such joy before, safe and smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, eyes squeezed shut to see the colors dance with him.

 

"Welcome home," he croaks, throat hoarse from singing and laughing.  "Welcome home, welcome _home_."


End file.
